


born of earth and light

by dizzyondreams



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Fantasy AU, M/M, Witch Eren, knight jean, resurrection au?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 06:11:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3718102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzyondreams/pseuds/dizzyondreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was winter the first time Eren brought something back from the dead.</p>
<p>The little bird was surrounded by a halo of red, and Eren scooped it up with gentle hands as his cat preened smugly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	born of earth and light

It was winter the first time Eren brought something back from the dead.

The little bird was surrounded by a halo of red, and Eren scooped it up with gentle hands as his cat preened smugly.

“Bad cat.” He muttered absently, the robin’s little body cold and still in his palms. “I know how to hunt,” He continued, wandering to take a seat on the mossy bench near his vegetable patch. “I don’t need you to show me.”

The cat meowed curiously, curling around his legs as Eren inspected the bird. “It looks so sad.” He told her, glancing down at the cat.

There was something about the small, sad body of the bird, the crumpled wing, the blood seeping into the lines of Eren’s palms. “Birds should fly,” Eren murmured, staring off into the trees. “I hate seeing dead birds.” The cat meowed again, and Eren decided to take it as an apology, scolded her gently. “It’s alright, just don’t do it again.”

He thought about the books he’d been reading, the plant he’d revived after it had wilted the other week. _’A stream of energy between the wielder and the deceased’_ , the book had read, _’directed with enough intent, will raise the freshly killed.’_

Eren had never brought anything as complex as a bird back to life. He thought of all those little broken bones, the still heart. It looked like it could be sleeping, if it wasn’t for the bright red blood.

“Well,” Eren announced to nobody, “There’s no harm in trying.”

He tried to picture his energy in his palms as a warm glow, healing and comforting. He felt it flow out of him, more than the plant had needed, enough to fix a tiny damaged bird.

A moment later the bird stirred, hopped up and fluttered its wings, pecked at Eren’s thumb before taking off. Eren could still feel the phantom weight in his palms, the blood drying in the cold air. He huffed out a breath, leaned forward to put his head between his knees.

“God,” He murmured, dizzy, the cat nosing his face. “That’s harder than it sounds.”

\--------

After the bird, Eren began practicing. He wandered the woods, looking for dead animals. He revived all the little dead birds his cat brought him, brought beetles and butterflies and spiders back to life as easy as thinking it. It was a morbid pastime, but soon Eren became good enough at birds that he barely got dizzy. He moved on up to rabbits, which he often freed from hunters traps and released back into the woods after bringing them back. They took it out of him, and more than once he’d had to take a nap after bringing one back, curled up on the ground with his head pillowed on his vest.

He found a deer once, it’s front leg twisted and bloody, white bone showing through. It’s throat was torn. Eren thought of the wolves that prowled these woods, of the vest he wore of one of their brother’s skins.

The deer had almost killed him. Eren’s unwavering need to save lives, his stubbornness, had almost killed him. He passed out next to the deer, woke the next day to the smell of rotting flesh as he heaved on his empty stomach into the grass. He’d wiped his mouth, gathered his things and left the deer, head pounding and knees wobbly with exhaustion.

Eren hadn’t tried anything as big since.

It was summer when he actively began practising again. He paced the woods for dead animals, came home to his tiny cottage smelling of blood. He’d wash his hands in the icy stream that ran past his house, watch the water float downstream in a cloud of red. At night, he pored over books with black covers and black words.

He became obsessed with death. With life.

Three months since he’d tried to bring the deer back, Eren was foraging, his herb bag swinging from his belt as he pushed aside bushes in search of what he needed. He tucked some mint into his pouch as he stood, the bones strung around his neck rattling with the movement.

“Wild garlic,” He murmured, mentally checking off what he needed. “Wolfsbane, foxglove.” He fingered the bone necklace at his throat. “Back before dark.”

He set off again, keeping an eye on the high afternoon sun. Before long he found himself in a part of the forest he hadn’t explored before, the trees dark and imposing. It was eerily silent, and Eren was sweating from the summer air. It seemed claustrophobic, with the closely packed trees and the heavy heat. He wiped at his forehead, gathered his hair off his neck in a thick plait, continued walking.

The silence of the forest pressed in on all sides, made Eren all too aware of his footsteps, the jangling of jewellery that followed him everywhere. He’d been wandering aimlessly for about an hour before he happened upon something very odd.

A ring of trees, huge dark evergreens, pressed their branches together closely, letting the faintest glow of dappled light onto the plants below. The floor was covered in thick tangles of brambles, dark green and malignant. Where the forest floor wasn’t choked by brambles, grass as tall as Eren’s thighs grew.

The sight itself was strange; what was probably once a clearing now teemed with vines and thorns, the grass long as if no animal had ever grazed there. However, what had made Eren stop was the flash of light he’d caught as he’d walked by. It was like a glint off a piece of metal that the sun had hit directly, and unless Eren’s eyes were playing tricks on him, that meant there was something metal in the center of that strange clearing. In Eren’s world, metal meant two things: money, or people. Money was useful, people were less.

He took a second to weigh it up in his mind, and decided that if it was a person he could at least rob them. With a sigh he shed his wolfskin vest, as the noon sun was beating down relentlessly on him, tied his skirt up high around his waist, and dived into the grass.

His hands soon started to come away bloody from the brambles, but he pushed forward. His path through the grass raised tiny flying insects in his wake, and he slapped at one on his leg before feeling immediately guilty.

The glint of metal was closer than before, and Eren moved forward with renewed effort. Sweat ran down his face, stung his eyes. Blood made his hands slippery, stained his skirt when he wiped them clean.

He was thinking about what he could buy with the money he would surely procure from this solid business venture when he came suddenly to a halt and stared.

It _was_ a person, but Eren’s first impulse wasn’t to rob him blind and leave him in the overgrown glade. He was handsome, Eren noted, stepping forward and pushing his hair back off his sweaty face. Fine, angular features and straw blond hair, very young, judging by the smoothness of his face. He was wearing a full suit of armour, his hands folded over the pommel of a rusty longsword that rested on his chest. Even in the heat of the day, in all that armour, he looked cool and comfortable.

He looked to be sleeping, eyes closed and face peaceful. The dark shadows of leaves were smattered across his still body, and Eren knelt gingerly next to him. _Was he dead?_ Eren’s hands hovered over him uncertainly.

“Spell to detect life,” Eren muttered to himself, touching the knight’s chest then yelping and whipping his hand away. The armour was red hot from being in the sun all day, and Eren cradled his hand against his chest as he tried to remember the spell. Giving up, he patted the knight’s cheeks a little, sat back on his heels when nothing happened.

He looked like he’d been there for years, judging by his rusted sword, his out of date armour. The grass grew around him like a wall, hiding him from the world. Eren leant forward, his necklaces swinging into the air between them, frowned at the knight’s pretty, lifeless face.

Then, a stray feather Eren had threaded in his hair fluttered. He sat back with a jolt. The glade was completely airless, the grass still around them. He was breathing, he was _alive_.

Eren had heard of this kind of magic, but had never seen it in real life. The kind of magic that let the forest grow around a man while he stayed as young and handsome as the day he’d been cursed. Eren’s eyes flicked down to the knight’s strong hands on the pommel of his rusty sword, back up to his slightly parted lips.

Deep in the back of Eren’s mind, he knew what he needed to do. What he _wanted_ to do, anyway. Any sane person would’ve robbed the knight of anything he had and went on their way. But Eren had always been a sucker for pretty faces and people who needed him to save them. Like the birds, the spiders, the deer.

He sat down properly in the grass, threading his fingers through it and thinking. The knight lay in front of him, motionless and larger than life. His armour, that rusty old sword, the unruly blond hair that curled in the heat. Eren could almost believe he wasn’t real. The glade was so oddly liminal, a space where time didn’t exist. No birds sang, the grass and the weeds didn’t move with no air to rustle them. The trees arched overhead, ominous and imposing. Eren felt like the only living thing in it, filled his lungs with air to remind himself of that.

If the deer was too much, a human would be suicidal. The knight was big too, tall and broad shouldered. “Suicidal,” Eren muttered to himself, glancing away and trying to spot the entrance of the glade. He glanced back at the knight, blew a lock of hair out of his eyes. He was too heavy to carry out, and besides he could feel the magic of the place keeping him alive. It curled around his body, in and out of his body with every shallow breath.

_I should leave him,_ Eren thought to himself, propping his chin in his hands with his elbows on his knees. _He’d just die anyway. He’s not my responsibility, I can’t go risking my life over him. I only stumbled across him by chance, if I hadn’t gotten lost I’d never have found him._ Eren couldn’t understand his attachment to the knight, and instead put it down to his innate need to _save_. He sat there for a few more minutes, weighing up the pros and cons as the sweat cooled on his skin.

“There’s no harm in trying,” Eren mumbled to himself, scrubbing a hand over his face. “The minute I start feeling like I’m gonna pass out, I’ll stop.” He told himself, then shifted so he was kneeling next to the knight. He muttered a quick spell of protection for his hands, then eased the sword out of the knight’s stiff grasp, and moved his hands to his sides. Then Eren cracked his knuckles, heaved a sigh, and pressed his hands firmly against the knight’s plated metal chest.

Eren didn’t feel the heat of the armour through his protection spell, just the sluggish beat of the knight’s heart and the dented metal under his hands. He shifted position, making himself comfortable, then squeezed his eyes shut and started reciting the spell before he could psych himself out.

It was a complicated spell, wordy. It needed all his concentration, and normally forced him to physically check out, to become fully concentrated in his mind. This is why he’d passed out with the deer, because he hadn’t realised how much energy it was leeching out of him.

He lost himself in the spell for a while, the words flowing off his tongue and dropping into the still air around him. The world narrowed down to his mouth, his mind, the darkness behind his eyelids. The weak thudding of the heart under his hands. He retreated into his mind, let his mouth move on autopilot as the sun dipped lower in the sky.

A little while later, throat dry, mouth still moving, Eren checked in with himself. His legs were shaking, as well as his arms, and he could feel the stream of energy like it was something physical. A shining gold rope connecting him and the knight, whose heart was beginning to beat more confidently under Eren’s hands. He sucked in a breath at the feeling of the thudding heart under him, just as his elbows buckled and he had to catch himself before he fell face first into the knight.

Shaking his head to rid himself of the dizziness, Eren plowed on. He knew he wasn’t being careful about this at all, but something about the knight made him feel reckless. There was a little mole on his throat, Eren remembered, and felt a surge of _something_ in him. He was so weak he could barely keep his head up, could feel his pulse pounding in his temple. His voice was a hoarse whisper, and sweat ran down his face and stung his eyes. The cuts on his hands had opened up again, and when he cracked his eyes open the knight’s chestplate was running with bright fresh blood. But his breaths were stronger, some colour returning to his pallid face.

Eren thought of the birds of could save, the deer he couldn’t. The way the dappled light from the trees fell on the knight’s still face, the little scar that bisected one eyebrow. He felt a tiny surge of energy in him, reached out desperately in his mind, grasping for anything he could draw life from. He felt a shock deep in his stomach as felt a bird dropped dead, then the ensuing rush of life into him. His hands slipped in the blood on the knight’s chest, and he stumbled in his incantation at the visceral feel of death directly in his mind. Shoving it to the back of his head, he reached out again, grasping at the shreds of life within the brambles surrounding them, felt them wilt under the grip of his mind. Another bird died, and Eren almost gagged at the feeling, pushed the energy into the knight’s body. He retreated back into his mind, and with one final mental push the knight under his hands gasped and coughed, scrabbled at Eren’s hands until Eren collapsed back into the grass. His vision wavered, black spots drifting across his eyes as he gasped for breath.

The last thing he felt before slipping into unconsciousness was a flash of bright, frightened confusion that wasn’t his own.

\---------

When Eren came to, the knight was sitting off to the side, drinking from Eren’s waterskin and looking more than a little harrowed. The back of his hair was all flattened from lying down for so long, and there was a streak of dried blood on his throat. His armour and chainmail was abandoned to the side, and he was sitting there in his shirt and leggings.

“That’s my goddamn water.” Eren managed to croak, then promptly vomited onto the ground next to him. The knight made a sound of distress, and Eren threw an arm out. “It’s fine, happens every time.” He wiped at his mouth with a shaking hand, groaned as he felt his stomach lurch again. “What’s your name.” He managed, closing his eyes against the sunlight that lanced into his aching head.

“What?” The knight said, voice husky from misuse. Eren made an irritated noise and spat into the grass.

“Your name.” He said shortly, then righted himself carefully and held a hand out. “Water.”

The knight handed it to him slowly, looking so confused Eren could almost _feel_ it. No, he _could_ actually feel it. The knight’s brimming panic was washing over him, making Eren set his teeth and take a gulp from the waterskin. He swilled it around in his mouth before spitting it out, drawing the back of his hand across his mouth. “Don’t panic.” He said roughly. “I’ll explain when I feel less like my brain’s gonna fall out.” He coughed and winced. “Now, your name?”

“Jean.” The knight muttered, then cleared his throat and glanced off to the side. “Sergeant Jean Kirschtein. I...I can’t remember how I got here.”

Eren ground the heel of his hand into his eye, groaning. The overspill of Jean’s emotions was irritating, and getting to him. His heart felt tight in his chest, and he took a deep breath to try and dispel it. “You were cursed.” He muttered, taking another swallow of water. “I don’t know by who, but,” He shrugged and glanced at Jean, who was twisting his fingers together anxiously and staring at him. “I brought you back.”

Jean froze. “What do you mean?” He asked cautiously, and Eren sighed and turned to face him fully. A thick wave of attraction rushed from Jean to Eren, who found he was too sick to even be pleased about it.

Eren had read about this, the odd mental mind link that lingered when a witch brought something back from the dead. Eren had felt it with everything he’d brought back so far, but it normally faded away after a minute or so. He’d never felt it so strongly and for so long before.

“You’ve been here for years.” Eren said bluntly, the pain in his head too much for him to dance around the topic. Jean looked stunned. Eren felt a pulse of fear across their mental link. “I mean, look at this place,” He gestured to the tall grass around them, the thick brambles. “You’ve been here so long the forest just,” He spread his hands. “Grew around you.”

Jean absorbed this information silently for a minute, looking down at his lap. His knuckles were white, fingers clenched together. Eren felt a rush of grief go through him, and when Jean raised his head his eyes were watery.

“And-and you brought me back?” Jean murmured wonderingly, and Eren had to look away from the expression of open vulnerability on the knight’s face.

“Yeah.” He grunted, “And you’re probably feeling really sick and painful right now, but that’s just me.” He flicked his gaze over Jean’s body, his healthy complexion. The pain etched into his face was only what Eren felt, shared over their mental bond. “You’re good as new.” Eren said, and managed to muster a laugh from some deep part of him. It probably didn’t sound very comforting, judging by the look on Jean’s face.

“The pain...is just you?” Jean asked carefully. He looked like he really didn’t want to know. Eren heaved a sigh.

“How do I explain this...I brought you back from what was basically death, and now we share a mental bond.” He took another drink of water, cut his eyes away. “There’s not a lot more to it.” Jean just nodded, mouth tight. Eren was experiencing such a confusing mixed wave of emotions from him that he couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “You’re taking this well.” Eren observed, tugging his hair from its braid and piling it on top of his head to get it off his neck. The heat was oppressive again, and Eren was sure he was running a fever.

Jean glanced at him, held his gaze when he realised Eren was looking. His face went a little pink, and Eren would’ve put it down to the heat if he hadn’t felt that rush of attraction come singing across their mental link again. “I guess I’m just too shocked to feel a lot more than that, right now.” He said, then smiled. Eren had to glance down at the ground at that, trying to keep his emotions stable so Jean wouldn’t have any inkling of how handsome Eren found him. He was so much more handsome in motion, the way his brow furrowed, his strong hands twisted together, that flash of a smile.

Eren decided not to linger on his strong arms and delicate wrists, just pushed himself to his feet and stumbled almost immediately. Jean leapt to his feet, steadied him with a hand on his elbow that Eren shook off almost immediately. His touch was like a jump of electricity to Eren’s skin.

“Maybe you should rest a little longer.” Jean fretted, hands hovering anxiously around Eren as he took step by laborious step through the brambles. The physical mark of his struggle was evident in the withered vines and shrubs, and Eren brushed them out of his way absently.

“I killed two birds.” He mumbled, knees buckling as a wave of dizziness came over him. Jean caught him, and Eren let him support him this time. He liked the feel of Jean’s arm around his waist, he realised, and blocked it from his mind before Jean could glean it from him.

“You can’t do anything about it.” Jean muttered, stopping at the edge of the clearing. Eren shut his eyes, searching in his mind’s eye for the dead bodies of the birds.

“I can at least let their souls free.” Eren retorted, stepping into the long grass and crouching down. He wobbled, and set his hand against a nearby tree trunk to steady himself. He felt Jean come to stand behind him, felt the weight of his emotions in his mind. It was almost...comforting, having someone else in there. Eren was alone by nature, his lifestyle didn’t lend itself to socialisation. He wasn’t lonely, didn’t know anything else, but the presence of another now was oddly welcome.

The dead birds lay next to each other, both having fallen from the same tree. There was no blood, no broken bones. They were just cold and still, lifeless. Eren touched them both, closed his eyes when he realised he didn’t have the strength to bring them back. He leant back against Jean’s leg, felt his surprise and then his affection.

“I’ll burn them.” Eren mumbled, swaying to his feet. He held his palm out and their bodies caught in a crackle of white blue flame.

Him and Jean, his resurrected knight, watched the smoke curl up into the red twilight sky, standing close in the darkening forest. Eren noticed that life had seemed to have come back to the woods, the grass sang with crickets, and he could hear birds trilling back and forth to each other. He tipped his head back, smelt the smoke, the grass, the sharp tree sap. The smell of his forest. He could feel the life of the forest thrumming under his feet, in the air, in his blood. He wondered if Jean could feel it too.

“Why’d you burn them?” Jean asked after a while, drawing Eren out of his reverie gently.

“Wouldn’t it be cruel to bury something that lives in the air?” Eren asked, looking up at Jean and noting with surprise the look on his face. Like he’d just woken up, like Eren was the most extraordinary thing he’d ever seen.

“You’re right.” He said quietly, and turned back to the fire. Eren looked down, and when he felt Jean’s fingers touch his, he smiled and hooked his little finger around Jean’s and held on.

They lingered until the tiny fires had burnt out, hands linked and the night growing dark around them. After a minute of blinking the imprint of the flames light out of his eyes, Eren untangled their hands and slapped Jean on the shoulder. “C’mon,” He muttered, turning away. “We’ve got a lot to do. Gotta introduce you to the pleasures of a gas stove.” He turned, gave Jean a thoughtful look. “Would you believe me if I told you about TVs?”

“What?” Jean asked, picking his way through the undergrowth behind him. “What’re you talking about?”

Eren just laughed, feeling something warm and good bloom in his chest as Jean caught hold of his hand and held on. They walked together through the woods, the twilight sky arching purple and pink above them.

**Author's Note:**

> so this was for the magic prompt for erejean week! rho drew the art which u can check out on their blog [here](http://efusi.tumblr.com/) i can’t thank them enough for drawing such Sick art for this fic + it was so fun working w/ them!! i hope y'all enjoy this fic as much as i enjoyed writing it !!
> 
> also thanks to rho and jean for reading over this for me!! ur gems
> 
> edit: [i made a mix for this fic!](http://8tracks.com/girlshinji/born-of-earth-and-light)


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